https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/luke-in- ... 567692986/
I would be curious to hear people’s thoughts on her view of emphasis or lack thereof in the various positions that the adjective takes.
In chapter 4 she deals with word order and on page 117 turns to “Adjectives in the noun phrase”.
She states the following regarding 1st attributive adjectives
Regarding second attributive position adjectives she stateThe more frequent order is article-adjective noun. In such cases, the order may express a familiar association of the adjective and the noun it qualifies… or it may accord equal attention to the adjective and the noun
This seems to make sense to me in many of the examples that she gives but runs counter to the view in some grammars I read in the past that the second attributive is an emphatic position. The notion of emphasis that I have seen in some of those grammars can be a bit vague with no specification as to what kind of emphasis is being given. Would it be reasonable to see the adjective in τὴν πύλην τὴν σιδηρᾶν as being emphatic is some sense, just not giving some sort of focal prominence, which remains on the noun, but expressly constraining the options as to which gate is thought of?When the adjective follows the arthrous noun (and the article is thereby repeated), the context is somewhat explanatory - explanatory rather than emphatic. The repetition of the article and the separation of the adjective and the noun that it qualifies seem to be factors that achieve this purpose. One example can be seen at 12.10: τὴν πύλην τὴν σιδηρᾶν, ‘the-gate-the-iron’, where the situation is one of defining which gate rather than naming it, as is the case with ‘The Beautiful Gate’ at 3.10
That is probably badly expressed, but I am wondering if there is a way to thread the needle and have Reid-Heimerdinger correct as well as people who say that the second attributive is actually emphatic - it just being a question of what we mean by emphasis. I haven’t done enough reading on prominence etc to really know here.
I am also aware that the discussion above doesn’t factor in information flow and I could probably do with re-reading Levinsohn’s work there.
She also deals with examples where the nouns and adjectives are both anarthrous
When the adjective is adding more detail to the noun, the noun being the more important of the two elements, then the adjective follows the noun… When the adjective is placed before the anarthrous noun, the epithet is usually more carefully chosen than when it is in post position. This may be because it is significant of itself, or because special emphasis is being given to it and attention is being focussed on it. Examples occur at 2.4 ‘other tongues’, ἑτέραις γλώσσαις